N Korea threatens ‘new form’ of nuclear test

Reuters, SEOUL

Mon, Mar 31, 2014 - Page 5

North Korea threatened yesterday to conduct what it called “a new form of nuclear test,” again raising its level of rhetoric after members of the UN Security Council condemned the nation’s recent ballistic missile launch.

“It is absolutely intolerable that the UN Security Council, turning a blind eye to the US madcap nuclear war exercises, ‘denounced’ the Korean People’s Army’s [KPA] self-defensive rocket launching drills and called them a ‘violation of resolutions’ and a ‘threat to international peace and security’ and is set to take an ‘appropriate step,’” the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on the official KCNA news agency.

‘DIVERSIFIED DETERRENCE’

The statement said KPA drills to counter the US will involve “more diversified nuclear deterrence” that will be used for hitting medium and long-range targets “with a variety of striking power.”

“We would not rule out a new form of nuclear test for bolstering our nuclear deterrence,” the North’s statement said, without giving any indication of what that might entail.

The statement also lacked a time frame for the potential KPA drills.

After Pyongyang fired two medium-range Rodong ballistic missiles into the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday last week, the Security Council’s 15 members on Thursday condemned the launches as violating previous UN resolutions.

THREATENING JAPAN

North Korea’s first firing in four years of mid-range missiles that can potentially reach Japan comes after a series of short-range rocket launches into the ocean over the past two months.

In defiance of UN resolutions, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test in February last year and declared that it had made progress in securing a functioning atomic arsenal.

It is widely believed the North does not have the capacity to deliver a nuclear strike to the mainland US.